Primrose Path
by vanillafluffy
Summary: During his 14 month imprisonment in Die Another Day, Bond takes refuge in a bizarre fantasy world. Who does he dream about in his darkest hours?


This tale came courtesy of a kinky double-O Bunny with evil thoughts about the fourteen-month gap between the teaser-opener and the prisoner exchange in "Die Another Day" who said, "Hmm... What was Bond up to all that time?"

Be warned, this story contains themes of torture, drug use, sexuality and mind games: how did Bond keep his sanity during his long imprisonment in North Korea?

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**Primrose Path**

During his long-ago training, Bond's instructors spoke with mingled distaste and grudging admiration for the methods of brainwashing the Koreans used on their POWs. Hard to get good help these days, he thinks sardonically. This lot makes no effort to turn him against his government. Instead, they ask him about operatives and signals and a variety of similar questions about which he inventively lies. Further punishment invariably ensues. That they always know he's lying disturbs Bond: they should _not _know the truth about these things.

As his period of captivity wears on, Bond sometimes regrets having disposed of his cyanide capsule as he is taken to levels of pain he never imagined. Now and then, he wishes he could take a jackhammer to the footpath near his home and rescue the film canister with its deadly contents. Crude, he thinks of his torturers as he recuperates from their sessions of fun and games, but all too efficient at what they do.

Time has lost its meaning; Bond estimates the passage of months by the fact that he no longer needs the wretched excuse of a blanket they have furnished him with. This appears to have begun life as a feed sack: the material is coarse and smells like wet rope. It offends him more than the torture. Despite the oft-repeated agonies they put him though, it is the little niceties of civilization he craves. Being a ragged barbarian living on rice, cabbage and fish offal is distasteful and he despises these people.

Sometimes, he distracts himself from his surroundings by imagining his actions as a free man: soaking in a whirlpool tub for hours until he feels decently clean, after which a good barber will shave and groom him. A splash of Bulgari Blu and he will present himself to a capable tailor. (If his captors had any inkling how much he longs for a clean, starched shirt, they might break him, but thankfully, it never occurs to them to dangle that lure.) Dinner...sometimes he's served prime rib with Yorkshire pudding, other times it's Scottish salmon or occasionally, a rack of lamb. His feast is shared by a beautiful, willing companion. This is followed by bed, naturally: with Egyptian cotton sheets, 350 thread count minimum, and goose feather pillows...

In one way, however, his torturers are particularly ingenious--they keep lacing his water with Viagra, or something of the sort--it's either that, or he's developed a taste for pain, which he rather doubts. During and after the torture sessions, Bond gets monstrous erections--he's as hard as a cricket bat--and stays that way for uncomfortable hours on end. Nothing brings relief; no amount of masturbation, not even when contemplating the loveliest of the lovelies he's bedded during his highly active sex life.

Repeated interrogation creates a tolerance for the drugs, and they up the dosages and one afternoon--he thinks it is afternoon, because he can see someone's wristwatch upside down although it could just as easily be two in the morning--the euphorics and the Viagra collide cataclysmically in his subconscious. One of the underlings drops a package of drugs--Bond hears vials shatter and hopes it's the damned Viagra--and the senior specialist in pain management berates her subordinate violently. Those drugs are _very _expensive, she scolds the clumsy worker. That comes out of the compound's annual budget--

Bond snaps. One minute he is listening to the torturer's apprentice getting chewed out, the next thing he knows, he's in M's office, and she's taking him to task about his expense account. How _dare _James blow her departmental budget on Scottish salmon? But I was in Scotland at the time, he points out. Surely Scottish salmon in Scotland is much more economical than it would be anywhere else?

And as they are slanging about the price of salmon in Scotland, a curious thing happens; M gets closer and closer in her tailored brown suit, gruff manner just as usual, when suddenly she grabs him by the front of his crisp pin-striped shirt and kisses him with passion.

Then he sweeps his suspect paperwork from the surface of her desk with a broad swipe of his arm and pushes her back onto it as she liberates his cock from his trousers. Does she really wear a pink lace push-up bra under that frumpy, coffee-coloured suit? Bond buries his face in his boss's modest cleavage, exploring. When his investigation moves farther south, he's amazed. A garter belt with no panties? Who knew that the head of MI-6 was such a wild woman? He gives it to her hard and fast, and she wraps surprisingly strong legs around his waist and demands more.

In his cell afterwards, Bond is disturbed. Of all the women he's ever met, M is the one he'd vote least likely to fuck. Where in God's name did that bizarre scene come from? He doesn't like M, has never been at all attracted to her---he doesn't even know her real name, not that that's unusual for him... Something as severe as she is, he decides, like Jane or Hester or Maud. Or something completely old-fashioned and absurd: Hortense, Gwendolyn, Prunella... He disciplines his unruly mind; this way lies madness, he tells himself, but with his next ticket to Pharmacopia, it happens again.

Somewhere along the line, his subconscious has decided he needs female comfort, although why it's picked this particular female is quite beyond him. There she is, eyes bright as a squirrel's, her bush brown and grey, lively and teasing, bantering with him about his nuts, which makes him blush. This time, M tells him to call her Primrose, and she gives him a blow job that causes the first sexual release he's had in many weary months---it irks his hosts to no end, and Bond is acutely alarmed. Primrose? He's lost his mind. That's the only rational excuse for the visions that accompany his imprisonment.

Yes, he knows he's hallucinating her scanty lingerie and the wicked fragrance of her Tabu perfume. They stop by a pub for fish and chips and a pint, go to concerts at Royal Albert Hall, lounge happily naked on the beach at St. Tropez, regardless of stretch marks and spider veins. Primrose visits him in his cell sometimes, and he curls up to her for comfort with his head on her lap. Frequently, they cavort in her office, that understated bastion of good taste and decorum. Her attitude combines toughness and tender-heartedness and occasional whimsy; Bond needs all of this. One afternoon in the country, as they are picnicking on cucumber sandwiches and strawberries--which in reality cause him a rash--Bond sees the light.

All the beautiful women he's made love to are too distant to contemplate. He's here, and they aren't. If he weren't here, he could pick and chose among them...but not her. His superior is unattainable, here or on the outside. Bond can dream about M because that is all it could ever--will ever--be. Sudden fear chills him, that being aware of the motive behind the fantasy will destroy the magic of her presence...but it doesn't. She returns again and again, still his guardian angel in a silken chemise, mentor, lover--a sterner judge by far than the ones who cause mere physical pain.

When it reaches the point where Bond is orgasming every second or third session, regardless of what they do to him, his tormentors take him off the drugs, cold turkey. Writhing in pain on the floor of his cell, he hears her remind him of why he is here, why he does what he does: for England. She embodies his country: at once thoughtful, strong and forthright. There is no nonsense about her, no false pity; when he needs Primrose in his darkest hours, she's there for him; he loves her and won't betray her. Like his mother country, he'll die for her.

Bond, exhausted but sane, enjoys the irony: she's been frustrating him for years with her directives--and now she annoys his captors, who don't understand how or why they haven't broken him. He was taken prisoner in February; it is now April of the following year. As Moon berates him, jeers that his people have abandoned him, Bond represses a smile. The General is wrong. Thanks to Primrose, he has endured and he will continue to do so...for as long as she needs him to.

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I have no rights whatsoever to James Bond, M, or General Moon and my profit from this enterprise is zero. (Had a great time writing it, though!) 

Thanks for reading. Double thanks for reviewing!


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